There's a saying in many of the newsrooms that I've worked in: "Every time we run an obituary, we've lost a subscriber."

The reason, of course, is that people my age are not reading newspapers anymore.

I realize many of you are still developing your online strategies, but in an effort to keep things from repeating themselves, I'd like to talk to you today about your future users and a phenomenon you may not be aware of.

There are currently 14.4 million two-year and four-year college students in the United States. And that number is projected to grow to 19.2 million in the year 2000.

The most important piece of advice I can give you is go visit a college campus and get to know these people. Because there is no better focus group for what the future holds than a college campus today.

Inspired by widely available grant money and student demand, colleges are racing to connect every dorm room to the Internet. College students have high speed connections and often receive their access for free. They don't have to tie up a phone line; fight with their spouse or their kids for use of the computer; or worry about their boss looking over their shoulder. Plus, they use the Internet 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.

While they read fewer newspapers, listen to less radio, and watch less television, college students use the Internet more than any other demographic group.

While college students make up just five percent of the U.S. population, at least one in every five Internet users is a college student.

Indeed, 85 percent of college students are projected to use the Internet at least once this semester, 62 percent at least once per week, and 50 percent will use it every single day.

All told, college students will spend 70 million hours online this week alone.

And it's not hard to see why.

Online discussion groups are replacing face-to-face sessions with professors. Classwork is assigned and submitted online. Already, students are using the web to find out what's for dinner, what's showing on campus, how the football team did, and what the weather forecast is.

And best of all, why bother picking up the phone to call Mom & Dad when you can ask for more money by e-mail?

Yet for all their numbers online, college students are dramatically underserved by today's online content offerings. Our company is working to fill that void.

We publish a site called Student.Com that combines the writing of the nation's top collegiate journalists with innovative uses of Internet technology to create a comprehensive, in-depth site devoted to college life. Many of the lessons we've learned will be applicable to you in your efforts.

Our site currently has four main concentrations:

1. A daily newsmagazine written by college journalists from around the country. We cover everything from financial aid policies to new movies and music to how to brew beer in your dorm room. If you're 21 or over, of course.

2. Community enabling features that help to facilitate interaction between our members. Among the most popular is "Yenta, the Student.Com matchmaker." An early version of Yenta allowed users to indicate whether they were a "prince" or a "princess" and whether they were searching for a "prince," a "princess," or an &quot artist formerly known as Prince."

3. Information services that help students to organize their lives. For instance, our site is the only place on the Internet where you can search television listings for up to six weeks and get e-mail reminders before a show airs.

4. Entertaining interactive features like the "Rejectomatic" which sends fake rejection letters to your friends. If any of you were rejected for the position of "coffee filtration technician," that was us — and we're sorry.

Over time, college students will get their news from us, meet new friends through us, buy their course books through us — and maybe even land a White House internship through us.

So what does this mean to you? A number of things:

1. Be ready for a world when your site is "always on."

College graduates will be a driving force in the deployment of broadband Internet access to the home. News cycles will increasingly have less meaning.

2. Allow users to shape their own experience and help them manage their lives.

How many of you are putting school lunch menus into databases that will let parents know when a meal their child won't eat is being served?

Or what about geomapping your crime reports so users can see where the dangerous parts in their neighborhoods are?

Or what about something simple, like letting users post the locations of pot holes and street signs that need fixing?

3. Experiment with story forms and conventions.

You're not going to attract young readers by doing the same types of writing as in your print editions.

4. Build context into whatever you do.

Give people access to the tools they need to make the decisions in their lives.

Finally, I'd like to leave you with one thought: For all the bells and whistles, the Internet is still at its heart a medium of words. If we as an industry can get college students to read online, there just may be hope for newspapers yet.